


Hellhound On My Trail

by theseviolentdelices



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M, and frank has a fixation on pretty things, billy is a silvertongued devil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 10:06:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15661032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseviolentdelices/pseuds/theseviolentdelices
Summary: Everything Frank Castle touches eventually turns ugly. That’s what he’s learned, that’s what he’s learning as he works over Billy the Beaut.But Billy’s breaking point is nowhere in sight. His smile is still there, mirthless, but there, staring up at Frank with all its brazen defiance and statuesque beauty.Maybe Frank just isn’t hitting hard enough.--Not even being Frank's personal punching bag can shut Billy up--so Billy decides to tell his former friend a quaint, little-known tale about his dead wife.





	Hellhound On My Trail

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say...I'll go down with this ship.
> 
> I do more flailing over my trash son and murder husband on my blog...smiley-celine.tumblr.com
> 
> Would love to know what you think of this one in the comments!

“I almost fucked her, ya know,” Billy muses from the chair to which his hands are zip tied, “that perfect little wife of yours--oOf”

Frank’s fist connecting with Billy’s face produces a dull slapping sound, turning Bill’s shit-eating grin bright scarlet. Not a tooth out of place on that model smile--not yet. He’s always taken care of his teeth. 

Bill’s bony chest shakes with laughter that ends in a rattling cough.

“Think I’m kiddin’, Frankie?” he presses on, “She  _ begged  _ me for it, too. ‘ _ Please, Billy,’ ‘take me, Bi--’” _

Another punch.

Two.

Three, and now one of Billy’s polished white molars feels loose and jiggly. Frank wishes it would bring him some satisfaction, seeing his best friend’s face swell and color from the blows, but it doesn’t. Not really.

Frank never liked to ruin pretty things. A hesitation left over from his childhood, he thinks. His parents always had pretty things in the house--things Frank wasn’t allowed to put his grubby little hands on. Porcelain vases, and the like. Tapestry armchairs that were covered in plastic to discourage comfortable reclining. 

Frank remembers his little self getting a hold of a fine piece of china from his mother’s cabinet--a thin, dainty thing with flowers painted it on it by hand. One of a kind. 

Little Frank’d gotten so excited. He was holding something precious. Something that was too good for him, somehow. He’d gotten so excited that the china had cracked under his grip. Fell to pieces between his hands and left him with gashes in his still-smooth seven-year-old palms.

Frank’d cried and cried. Not from the cuts, but because he felt like a monster for ruining that impeccable creation.

It’s a paradoxical feeling, really. The overwhelming desire to crush the aesthetically pleasing in his war-marred fists, to hold on to it and never let it go--coupled with the poignant guilt, the hollow sadness that floods him when the thing reaches its breaking point and shatters, unable to withstand Frank’s onslaught of violent love, of violent adoration.

That’s what it feels like every time he strikes Bill’s sharp Adonis jawline. Every blow that lands on Billy’s pretty face, every bruise that blossoms and swells and obscures Billy’s beady doll-eyes seems to take Frank back to his mother’s dining room--sitting tear-stained on the carpet with pieces of china all around him, lamenting the destruction of something so  _ perfect. _

Everything Frank Castle touches eventually turns ugly. That’s what he’s learned, that’s what he’s  _ learning _ as he works over Billy the Beaut.

But Billy’s breaking point is nowhere in sight. His smile is still there, mirthless, but  _ there _ , staring up at Frank with all its brazen defiance and statuesque beauty.

Maybe Frank just isn’t hitting hard enough.

Four.

Five.

Bill just sputters blood onto Frank’s combat boots and goes painstakingly on, black marble eyes staring out from behind curtain-thick eyelashes in burning contempt. Bill’s crimson-colored smirk follows Frank’s pacing around the damp basement. 

Even when he closes his eyes, Frank can see it. That smirk holds nothing sacred. No bond, no union, no brotherhood. All that passive, twisted quirk of Bill’s full lips understands is violence.

“Now, we both know Maria could never hold her liquor, so when she called me at 3AM sayin’ she was in a bar, alone, that you’d had a fight and you’d stormed out on ‘er--hell, what else could I do?” he grins, or rather,  _ continues _ to grin, “I went and drove all the way to fuckin’ Queens, peeled your honeybunch wife off a table with five empty appletini glasses, and hauled her dainty little ass back home. And did I utter  _ a word _ of complaint when she nearly puked all over my car?” he snorts, blood shooting back up his nostrils and leaking to the back of his throat until he tastes metal. 

“ _ No. _ I was Uncle Billy! Bein’ the Castle family’s sidekick was my purpose in life, don’t ya know. Got ‘er all the way back to Bayside in one piece and listened to her mumble about how you’d stopped havin’ sex with her,” Billy rolls his doll eyes, “Carried ‘er up the stairs to your neat little bedroom, princess style ‘cause I knew that’s what you woulda’ wanted. Cradled her pretty head in my arms and made damn sure I didn’t smack it against the railin’,” he bites his split lip, causing more blood to stream from it, “she  _ really _ looked like a porcelain doll that night, let me tell ya.  _ You _ , my friend,  _ have a type _ ,” Bill’s sweetheart pink tongue darts out to lick off the pool of crimson that is dripping from his nose. Even that isolated movement manages to be impeccably  _ rehearsed _ . Like he’s in a movie about being beaten to death instead of it  _ actually _ being so. “You like ‘em nice and pretty.”

Billy’s nose is likely broken, but even that doesn’t stop him from looking self-satisfied. Even  _ that _ doesn’t silence him. 

Tied to a chair, it still feels like Billy’s the one commanding the room. The center of Frank Castle’s attention, just the way he likes it.

“Now, she can barely stand on ‘er own two feet at this point, right?” he relates like a bard, silvertongued and cutting, “So I tuck the bitch in on ‘er side so she doesn’t face her sorry end chokin’ on ‘er own sick, and the next thing I know she’s fuckin’  _ kissin’ _ me and leavin’ her cheap-ass lipstick all over my face, and pantin’ ‘ _ take me, take me _ ,” Fuck, I mean how long had you not stuck it in her at that point I don’ know but I’m tellin’ you man, she was  _ desperate--” _

_ Six. _

“Really, Frank?” Bill spits a tooth out--the molar that finally sprung free. “You’ve gotta come up with somethin’ more original than that. Come on, use your words, Frankie, I know you can do it,” he leers, “Maria sure had a way with words. Beggin’ for my cock like a needy little whore.”

Frank’s is practically breathing fire. It’s time for this fine piece of china to crack, to break like the soulless, inanimate object he is.

Seven.

Eight.

_ How is he still laughing? _

“She had no idea, did she? No idea that you’d been fucking me raw behind supply crates for  _ years _ before she--”

_ Nine. _

“Whaddyou think of that, Frankie?" he's breathing is rapid and bestial, tongue hanging out, framed by his symmetrical canines, "I could’ve fucked her nice and hard right there on your crisp cotton sheets while you were takin’ your frustrations out on some punching bag at the gym. Maybe given ‘er a taste of what you liked to do to me. Think she would liked tha--”

_ Ten. _

Labored breaths. Choking on blood, but he still presses on. There’d only ever been one thing that shut Bill up.

He spits bits of his cheeks onto the ground then tilts his head back up.

“What I lacked in agreeability I made up for with my pretty face and my tight asshole, huh Frankie?” he laughs, laughs like those words really tickle him. Then he groans, “and my mouth. You always liked my mouth, right? Tell me somethin’ Frankie, who sucked you off better, me or her?”

Frank stops hitting him. He thinks that if he hits Bill one more time, he’s going to keel over himself. 

It’s too much. He needs to get out of there--needs to put as much distance between himself and this bastard excuse for a human being as possible.

“Ah, don’t worry,” Bill jeers, “that one was rhetorical. I bet Maria was always afraid to choke, but not me. I  _ loved  _ that shit.”

“Shut the fuck up, Bill.”

“Ohohoho!” the prisoner exclaims with true joy. The same joy that’d be on his face when he beat Frank at cards, or when Frank came in his mouth and accidentally caught those black doll’s eyes staring up at him, gleaming with conspiratorial satisfaction, the sort Frank imagines a crossroads demon experiences once he’s made his pact in blood. 

“ _ He speaks!” _

That’s what this is, Frank realizes. The weight of Bill’s eyes on him might as well be the nipping of hellhounds at his heels. A lifetime ago, Frank made a pact. Now, the demon has come to collect.

“I’ll tell you what, Frankie, just thinking about our old times together is gettin’ me all hot and bothered, how ‘bout you?”

Frank closes the distance between them. Gets in Bill’s face, clamps a heavy hand around that pale, delicate throat and squeezes until Bill’s eyes bulge out of their sockets, until gurgles start to escape his pillow-soft, bloodstained lips. How dare he, huh? How  _ dare _ he even insinuate that Frank could feel anything for him,  _ anything _ but contempt and rage after he’d betrayed him, after he’d--

Frank hears the snap of plastic and realizes too late that it’s the sound of zip ties breaking. Frank’s already seeing stars from the sheer force of Billy’s hands cracking down on either side of his skull. He stumbles back, world spinning, and at the center of it, Billy’s toothy smile, all razor sharp white canines. Is he foaming at the mouth, or is that just Frank’s treacherous mind playing tricks?

“Come on now,” Billy clucks as he stands over him, “if you’re gonna choke me, at least do it the way you used to.”

Frank should fight. He should kick Billy’s long legs out from under him and finish this once and for all. Snap that graceful neck--it would be easy. Easy as crushing china.

Bill saves his friend the trouble--kneels down, gets on all fours, plants one hand beside Frank’s head and leans over him, uses the other to paw at his crotch.

Frank has him on his back in an instant. He thinks he has the upper hand, but no--this is what Bill wants, he can see it in that psychotic smile, he can feel it pressing against his leg through Billy’s jeans.

“Whaddyou think, Frankie?”

This is all he says, and it’s breathless and sweet as honey and _amused_ as all hell. 

The next thing Frank feels is the sting of teeth clamping down on his neck, hands tugging at his belt.

Billy the Beaut is nowhere near his breaking point. The Punisher has barely put a crack in his fine exterior.

But for Frank, this becomes the final blow.

Frank tastes blood when he kisses him, but that’s not all. He can feel feel the upward quirk of the other man’s lips, sealing whatever deal this is. 

Frank holds on to his pretty thing, and he doesn’t let go.

Frank tells himself it's just until the other man breaks.

**Author's Note:**

> "For Frank, this becomes the final blow" is a pun that was most definitely INTENDED.


End file.
